While you soar right into a video on YouTube or Netflix, rather a lot occurs in a short time behind the scenes. Video knowledge is quickly downloaded to your system, which then has to unpack and normalize that info right into a easy, hiccup-free stream. The method of encoding and decoding video knowledge has modified tremendously over time, with H.264 (AVC) and its successor H.265 (HEVC) remaining two of essentially the most extensively used codecs for streaming.
However in 2015, tech giants together with Netflix, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta banded collectively to develop video compression’s newest evolution: AV1. The businesses, that are a part of the overarching Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), say the video codec is round 30 % extra environment friendly in comparison with different requirements like HEVC and the Google-developed VP9, permitting it to ship higher-quality video at a decrease bandwidth. AOMedia additionally claims that it’s royalty-free, which means streaming system makers and video suppliers shouldn’t should pay patent holders for utilizing the know-how.
That every one ought to have been sufficient for AV1 to take over the video panorama. However even with all these enhancements and the backing of a number of the greatest names in tech, the codec hasn’t turn out to be ubiquitous. Many main names in streaming, together with Max, Peacock, and Paramount Plus, nonetheless haven’t adopted AV1.
Since AV1’s debut in 2018, we’ve seen large gamers hop on board and use the codec for streaming high-resolution content material in 4K and 8K. Google started testing AV1 on YouTube in 2018, whereas Netflix added assist for AV1 in 2021. Amazon Prime Video additionally adopted AV1 in 2021, and the codec is utilized in Instagram Reels in addition to for screensharing in Microsoft Groups. Discord launched assist in 2023, and Twitch is working on its implementation. Browsers like Google Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox have adopted AV1, too.
A flurry of gadgets have adopted AV1 decoders, together with TVs, telephones, and streaming gadgets
As for everybody else, there are a couple of the reason why they could not have adopted AV1 but, and a easy one is {hardware}. For AV1 to work correctly, a tool has to have the {hardware} to assist it — or in any other case run probably resource-intensive software program that may deal with decoding AV1 content material as an alternative.
Inside the previous 5 years or so, a flurry of gadgets have adopted AV1 decoders, together with TVs, telephones, and streaming gadgets like the most recent Amazon Fireplace TV Stick 4K Max. Chip makers like Nvidia, AMD, and Intel have launched GPUs with the tech. In the meantime, Apple constructed an AV1 decoder into its iPhone with the launch of the iPhone 15 Professional in 2023, and it later added AV1 assist throughout all the iPhone 16 lineup final yr. However not each system maker has been eager to undertake the AV1 codec, as Roku accused Google of coercing the corporate into supporting the usual in 2021, claiming it might drive up prices to shoppers.
“As a way to get its greatest options, you need to settle for a a lot increased encoding complexity,” Larry Pearlstein, an affiliate professor {of electrical} and laptop engineering on the School of New Jersey, tells The Verge. “However there’s additionally increased decoding complexity, and that’s on the patron finish.”
There are answers for gadgets that don’t have a devoted AV1 {hardware} decoder, however they’re simply not as environment friendly. Google, as an example, lets Android app builders allow dav1d, an AV1 decoder developed by VideoLAN. YouTube is simply one of many apps that use dav1d, which permits it to beam AV1 movies to customers on older or mid-range telephones. Nonetheless, some customers on YouTube have reported points with cellphone battery life following the implementation.
Proper now, AOMedia says round 95 % of Netflix’s content material is encoded with AV1, versus 50 % of movies on YouTube. “It’s at all times going to be the rooster and egg, proper?” Hari Kalva, chair and professor of Florida Atlantic College’s division {of electrical} engineering and laptop science, tells The Verge. “Who ought to construct this know-how earlier than the [AV1] content material exists, versus have they got sufficient gamers to play this content material?”
Different requirements have emerged within the video compression house, too. VVC, often known as H.266, was developed by the Shifting Image Specialists Group (MPEG) and the Video Coding Specialists Group (VCEG) — the identical teams behind HEVC and AVC. It was finalized in 2020 and is alleged to compress video utilizing 50 % much less knowledge in comparison with HEVC, a bit greater than AV1’s promise of 30 % effectivity financial savings. However, not like AV1, VVC isn’t royalty-free.
Even with extra environment friendly video compression, AV1 comes with some tradeoffs that would hamper adoption. For one, compressing movies utilizing AV1 takes extra time and power. “As a way to get that increased compression, you need to spend extra time getting there,” Pierre-Anthony Lemieux, the manager director of AOMedia, stated throughout an interview with The Verge. “As codecs get extra environment friendly, they require extra energy.”
Although Lemieux instructed The Verge that AV1 implementers have agreed to not cost for the usage of the codec, the group’s royalty-free declare may not be as clear-cut because it’s offered. For years, the businesses that implement video compression codecs have needed to pay a price to make use of the requirements, sometimes via patent swimming pools. Patent swimming pools enable corporations to license a bunch of patents for a sure know-how , relatively than having to barter with particular person patent holders. Corporations just like the By way of Licensing Alliance, Entry Advance, and Sisvel handle entry to patent swimming pools for applied sciences like HEVC and VVC.
“Video compression, specifically, is an space that has had many, many good folks engaged on it for a very long time,” Robert Moore, an lawyer specializing in mental property at Volpe Koenig, instructed The Verge. “The improvements that these folks have created are what I’d name an IP thicket — mainly a really, very difficult atmosphere for anybody to develop know-how that could be a customary that’s commercially viable.”
“Our members are engaged on the following large factor.”
Some swimming pools have since emerged and are claiming royalties on patents utilized by AV1, as outlined by Streaming Media, with the newest forming in January 2025. AO Media responded to the information of the primary licensing program in 2019, saying it was “based to go away behind to go away behind the very atmosphere that the announcement endorses and had settled “patent licensing phrases up entrance.”
The European Union additionally opened up an investigation into AOMedia’s licensing coverage in 2022 over issues that its “necessary royalty-free cross licensing” settlement may stifle innovation, because it may have an effect on “innovators that weren’t part of AOM on the time of the creation of the AV1 technical, however whose patents are deemed important to (its) technical specs,” in line with Reuters. The Fee closed its investigation in 2023 for “precedence causes.”
That uncertainty nonetheless isn’t stopping AOMedia and its adopters from plowing forward with AV1 as the way forward for on-line streaming — and dealing on its potential successor. “AV1 goes to be right here for endlessly, most likely,” Lemieux instructed The Verge. “However in fact, our members are engaged on the following large factor, and I anticipate one thing later this yr.”
